Areas vs Resources
No action/non action divide so a little tougher than Projects vs Area
Areas of Responsibility are the roles you take on in life and the hats you wear (Spouse, Mother/Father, Team Leader, Soccer Coach), the ongoing standards where the buck stops with you (Product Development, Company Newsletter, Legal), and things that take a certain amount of constant attention (Exercise, Finances, Apartment, Pets).
Resources are interests (web design, crowdfunding, woodworking, frisbee golf, bio-hacking), themes (psychology, politics, leadership, integrity), and assets (stock photos, typography links, marketing swipe file, product testimonials, code snippets). I even use lower-case titles with resource notebooks, to remind myself that they are just interests, and capital letters for areas of responsibility.
There is another useful guideline here: put personally relevant information in Areas, and generally useful information in Resources.
- Health (area) would have blood tests, dr notes
- Workout (resource) would have interesting articles, new workouts
- Can share resources without thinking…areas would contain personal info
The beauty of PARA is that each category can flow to another. Project into Area (if it becomes ongoing, Resource into Project (if you’ve been gathering info and now ready to act) and of course, Archive back and forth if/when necessary.
Just in time Flow
Do not over engineer, block out time to organize, stress over keeping file structure the same across all devices…system is resilient and something is better than nothing.